Alibris Consolidates Mission-Critical Systems on 3PAR

SYS-CON Media - Montvale,NJ,USA
... Alibris selected 3PAR Utility Storage to support its inventory
management system, retail website, search engine and e-commerce
order-processing system, ...

FREMONT, CA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 05/08/07 -- 3PAR®, the leading provider of Utility Storage, announced today that Alibris -- the online exchange for sellers of more than 60 million used, new and out-of-print book, music and movie titles worldwide -- has deployed 3PAR Utility Storage to support all mission-critical applications, including its data-intensive product inventory system. Alibris (www.alibris.com) selected 3PAR InServ® S800 Storage Server because of the highly virtualized platform that offers high performance and massive scalability with unmatched simplicity.

"A reliable, high-performing and easy-to-use consolidated storage platform is key to successfully scaling our data-intensive applications," said Michael Schaffer, Chief Technology Officer at Alibris. "With 3PAR Utility Storage, we get maximum simplicity coupled with high performance. Now only 15% of our system administrator's time is spent managing storage. 3PAR's virtualization automatically optimizes our disk drive investment with zero potential for lost performance."

Alibris sought a new, highly virtualized storage consolidation platform that would deliver high performance, massive scalability, high availability, cost-efficiency and ease of use. After evaluating alternatives from traditional Network Attached Storage (NAS) and Storage Area Network (SAN) vendors, Alibris selected 3PAR Utility Storage to support its inventory management system, retail website, search engine and e-commerce order-processing system, which are all based on multiple clustered Microsoft® SQL Server(TM) databases.

Alibris is the premier online destination for those seeking an unparalleled selection of books, as well as an ambitiously expanding catalog of music and movie titles. These items are offered to consumers through a variety of channels, including the Alibris retail websites (which include recently launched Alibris U.K. -- www.alibris.co.uk) and those of its partners, such as Barnes & Noble, Borders, Amazon.com and Half.com/eBay. Through its proprietary technology and advanced logistics, Alibris manages physical and virtual inventories by connecting millions of interested buyers to the products on the shelves of thousands of independent sellers from 45 countries around the world.

Critical to Alibris' success is the ability to ensure the accuracy and currency of its inventory of more than 60 million product SKUs. Registered Alibris sellers can alter prices, add/remove inventory, and update other aspects of their inventory records on a 24x7 basis. During a typical day, this can result in up to 10 million changes to the Alibris inventory system. This massive change rate creates an extraordinary transactional load on the storage platform.

As transaction volume soared, Alibris determined that its previous, direct-attached storage environment would not scale in performance or capacity. The online bookseller also recognized that it needed the flexibility to adapt quickly to changes in business needs. 3PAR's highly virtualized InServ Storage Server was the perfect fit to meet Alibris' needs.

"Virtualized storage enables users to achieve massive levels of consolidation and drive dramatic cost savings," said Steve Norall, Senior Analyst and Consultant at Taneja Group. "Web-based businesses, whose storefronts are critically dependent on performance and on-demand scalability for a positive customer experience, should carefully evaluate consolidating onto Utility Storage."

Alibris has realized the following gains by consolidating on 3PAR Utility Storage:

-- Dramatic increase in responsiveness. Alibris is able to provision
application-tailored storage in seconds versus days, with no time-consuming
and complex planning activities or costly professional services required.
The InServ Storage Server installation and training were completed in less
than a day.

-- 85% reduction in storage administration time. Only a small fraction of
the system administrator's time is spent managing storage.

-- Over 300% increase in I/O workload while continuing to meet rigorous
service-level requirements.

-- Ability to non-disruptively rebalance I/O workloads with a single
command to spread data evenly over all system resources upon adding
additional controller nodes and disk capacity.

-- Optimization of storage for Test and Development applications by
incorporating cost-efficient Nearline storage capacity within a single,
massively scalable, tiered InServ Storage Server.


"We are pleased to have selected a storage array that does the provisioning for us, perfectly," said Alibris' Schaffer. "With 3PAR Utility Storage, we don't select physical disks any more than we select physical RAM addresses when allocating memory in our applications. The InServ presents all disks as one unified pool and automatically load-balances our workload across that pool."

3PAR's massively parallel InSpire® Architecture -- which automatically spreads all data evenly over all system resources (disks, processors, loops, etc) -- assures high and consistent service levels, even under failure conditions. 3PAR's unique mixed-workload support provides Alibris the freedom to perform data analysis/reporting while serving transactional production workloads. As a result, Alibris is able to scale easily within a single, self-configuring, load-balanced system.

"We are proud to be the storage platform that fuels the success of Alibris in helping book, music and movie lovers to find what they're looking for," said David Scott, President and CEO of 3PAR. "The simplicity, scalability and cost savings achieved by Alibris are great examples of how Utility Storage is empowering Web-based businesses to do more with less."

About 3PAR

3PAR is the leading provider of Utility Storage, a simple, efficient and massively scalable tiered-storage array for utility computing that lets customers serve more with less. 3PAR Utility Storage can cut an organization's Total Cost of Data by 50%. Capacity and related costs can be cut by 75% while storage administration and associated expenses can be reduced by 90%. 3PAR Utility Storage is ideal for open systems storage consolidation, integrated data lifecycle management and performance-intensive applications.

3PAR is based in Fremont, California, and has offices in Bracknell, UK, Stuttgart, Germany, and Tokyo, Japan. The company's corporate headquarters are located at 4209 Technology Drive, Fremont, CA 94538. Phone: 510-413-5999, fax: 510-354-3070, email: salesinfo@3pardata.com, Web site: http://www.3par.com.

© 2007 3PAR, Inc. All rights reserved. 3PAR, the 3PAR logo, Serving Information, InServ, InForm, and InSpire are all registered trademarks of 3PAR, Inc. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.